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Editing for Conciseness

Writing often suffers from two kinds of wordiness: one kind gives more information than readers need (Think of a typical TV weather report.); the other kind uses too many words to convey the information that readers do need (for instance, "a great deal of potential for the future" = "great potential").

Every word in the document should advance your meaning. To quote William Zinsser, a noted writing expert:

Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
A concise message conveys the most information in the fewest words. But it does not omit details necessary for clarity.

But remember the difference between concise, clear writing and compressed writing that is impossible to decipher.

First drafts rarely are concise. Always revise parts that are wordy, repetitious, or vague. Get rid of anything that adds no meaning.

The following suggestions will help you edit for conciseness.

  1. Avoid wordy phrases.
  2. Eliminate redundancy.
  3. Avoid needless repetition.
  4. Avoid There sentence openers.
  5. Avoid some It sentence openers.
  6. Delete needless prefaces.
  7. Avoid weak verbs.
  8. Delete needless to be constructions.
  9. Avoid excessive prepositions.
  10. Fight noun addiction.
  11. Make negatives positive.
  12. Clean out clutter words.
  13. Delete needless qualifiers.






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